A SOULFUL QUESTION FOR THE AMBIVALENT:Can't make up your mind about who should get your soul? Park Outdoor is there to serve as a DeFault Soul Recipient (DSR) and it says so right at the bottom of this billboard in Elmira Heights, where people know a thing or two about losing their souls.

Tiny Town Satellite of Elmira Hgts – The question is simple – the editorial use of "We" suggests a third party is involved in this life or death "advertisement."

And lo! Who but Park Outdoor?

Yes! The deceased Roy Park, national Pennysaver and billboard mogul, railroad tycoon, fish monger and world class snake charmer, kicker of Carpet Bagging ass since the Reconstruction Period, speaks to us from beyond the pale horizon of mortal beings.

In his time this immortal consorted with all manner of saint and sinner. It was never clear whose side he was on but it is clear that our late local billionaire is now interested in much bigger stuff than making bucks off Corporate Christians and baffling the Ithaca College Board of Trustees with bricks and mortar instead of big fat endowments.

He wants us to make a choice. Not today, necessarily, but right soon, ya heah? If no decision comes, Park Outdoor gets your soul. It's just that simple.

Clever man he is, we see Park still working both sides of the gambit. He leaves the decision to each motorist and pedestrian. At last count, he was as successful snatching souls as Citigroup was at subsidizing subprime mortgages.

He doesn't even care if these blown up digitized images are crapass. He knows we know that THAT's Jesus, the non-perishable son of G-d, on the left, and that THAT's a Filipino Box Spring Hog marinated in tandoori and roasted to perfection, on the right.

What a guy ol' Royal Horatio Park! A man who had his own personal landscaping crew to attend those prodigious eyebrows! -- and who knows? Once he passed this earthly manure pile, those heat and light seeking brows may have grown and grown, ever toward the starry climes where he now travels; tiny tendrils piercing invisible seams in his golden tomb of Hammurabi ... rise! rise antennae, rise! like the grasses along the Ypres Salient; surgically invading the graveyard turf, immune to fertilizers, a great intelligence, at work, fronds retreating at the sound of mowers and edgers ... nibbled at by ruminant and weasel to their distaste but a useful floss for cats, confusing pheasant and peacock, butterfly dog and plant pathologist -- Brows of no minor player in the Roman Pantheon -- friend to the Greek shipping magnate, and the King of Nestlé Quik!

Welcome back old fella! We knew you'd send us a message sooner or later.

And fiendishly clever of you to outwit that wacko Cayuga Heights mayor who was giving your daughter such trouble about the deer. He's gone -- and ... and -- YOU are here.